WHY AM I SO [removed ]STUPID? CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY BRAIN?

Long, but I think very useful post ahead, because I've really been thinking a lot lately about how mindset can really hold people back in chess. Mainly because I've gotten stuck in this kind of thinking a few times, similar to OP (not as intensely though).

I think the trap is thinking that doing a lot of work means you should get more wins. And then getting incredibly frustrated when it doesn't. I've noticed this in a lot of players who work really hard on getting better, myself included. Sometimes, less is more, like if you are spending 8 hours a day and not getting results, you need to consider why. For example I'd be doing 1-2 hours of puzzles a day, higher puzzle rating than average for my elo, then still hanging basic tactics occasionally. I was on an 8 game loss streak (a lot for me when I'd only play 1-2 games a day) which included 3 players around 300 points below where I was at the time (ouch). Each game except one against a much higher opponent I was actually winning, some even dominating, before I made some hasty mistake and crumbled the game away due to tilt, and even after a while a loss of confidence.

Well I do have a chess journal and I did a lot of reflection on what was going on, I was doing so much work on puzzles, chessable, studying, instructional videos, all kinds of things. And I was getting big advantages but I just kept crumbling. I wanted to get better so bad and kept working harder to try to. The thing was, that I was putting so much pressure on myself, thinking that because of all the work I should be winning as if it was just owed to me. One thing I realized, was my puzzle rating was going up, I was doing better on chessable, all these other things I was getting better at them individually but it wasn't fully translating to the big picture of the game.

This is where I realized you have to stop caring if you lose. Hikaru has talked about this is where he started to really get good too, once he let go of that need to win. And this is the exact mindset I have seen in the OP and in so many players who work hard but get incredibly demoralized when it doesn't translate to their elo. That's an extremely frustrating thing. But here's how it works: you feel like every game is an evaluation of your skill, every loss hits hard. You play the next game trying to prove to yourself you're better than that, if it doesn't work out you will spiral even more. Every game you are getting tilted extremely easy, more and more frustated because you shouldn't be losing this much. As your elo drops you get lower opponents, but by then you're playing so below your level that even they can beat you, which snowballs the problem even more. When it's really bad, I honestly think this kind of spiral can make you play hundreds of elo points worse than your normal level. And it can last weeks or months if you don't break the cycle.

Now here's the truth, in Chess it doesn't matter if you win or lose one game. Even in a tournament, very rare that a match would only be one sudden death game. Even Magnus, Kasparov, Fisher etc all lose some games in most matches, and certainly lost plenty of matches on the way up which they learned from and made them who they became. What matters is the long term result. This is where your focus should be, not on each game, not on each day. So if we go back to the example scenario, if someone had this kind of mindset instead of the one people like OP and myself can find themselves with where they should be winning, they lose that first game and they don't care. Because that game is such a small, tiny part of the big picture. Since they're more focused on the long run, they'll actually be more inclined to view that loss not as a failure, but as an opportunity to learn. They have a mindset of curiosity, not pressure. In long term Chess improvement, nothing is more important than learning from your mistakes. The person with this mindset has a huge advantage over the person who is putting pressure on themself, even if that person is technically spending more time and effort on improvement.

Especially in game. Person one makes a blunder or even a small mistake and is instantly tense and worried that feeling of failure is going to come up again. They get tilted even without realizing, this can literally activate parts of the brain which are not as good with higher level thinking and suddenly you're playing well below your level. The thing is that playing to get the wins you feel you have coming to you, literally keep you from focusing on finding the best move because you're looking past your opponent. Even someone rated hundreds of points below you can definitely win when you're not giving proper focus, this happens all the time. So you can never look past your opponent.

Now when you approach the game with curiosity, and the mindset that you'll either get the win or you'll learn something very useful (which long term will be worth dozens of wins or more, from one good takeaway), you really can't "lose". You're thinking long term. You either win, or you learn, and in that way win in the long term. This mindset will take you so much further, not just in the long term but every individual game. When the person with this mindset make a mistake, they will not get tilted, they will think something like "hmm, that didn't work, let's see if we can figure out a way back from this". They will continue to play the rest of the game focused, and at near 100% of the level they started the game with. It takes time to build up this kind of mindset. But you will comeback and win a surprisingly high amount of games this way, or find draws to force. Most importantly you will learn from it, especially after when you analyze the game. I get far more comeback wins playing with this mindset than I ever did when I played with the previous way of thinking. It is so hard to get a comeback win when you're playing through frustration and tilt, which again literally activates parts of your brain which aren't associated with the higher order thinking chess requires.

So, what I do before every game is run through a little mindset refresher. Remind myself it does not matter if I lose or make a mistake, because I can study it after the game, or maybe learn something interesting during the game from it. That makes me a better player, much more than winning the game would have. Afterall you can get 8 elo for free if your opponent loses internet on move 5, but did that make you any better? No, so winning is not what is important here. Improvement is. Which requires presence, humility, and a sense of curiosity and not pressure, expectation, or a sense of "deserving" the win. Elo comes naturally as you improve. You don't even have to put extra effort for it, just play at your level and play enough games and it will be there. So remember to focus on the long term process, not the short term result. If you're learning from your losses (again, the most powerful tool in chess improvement), the elo will just naturally increase. I'm up to a 71% win streak and a new peak rating since I've been focusing on my mindset like this and spending way more time analyzing my mistakes. And most of those losses were at the start of making that change. Though I have taken a break from chess for two weeks because I've been pretty busy. I'm starting up again now.

And I realized 1-2 games a day was making me feel like a loss was a bad day, I started playing about 4. It helped take a lot of the pressure of feeling I needed it to be a win for the day not to be a failure (in reality it's only a failure if you don't learn). Remember be present and always make sure your focus is on finding the best move, or the right idea or plan, and managing the clock. I also have a rule that I stop for the day to go focus more on puzzles or study etc whenever I lose two in a row, stops losing streaks from starting (could be 3 out of 4, or whatever rule works for you. But I think it's helpful to have a firm rule like this for yourself).

It's really been eye opening how much of a difference for my game it has made, and now I see it everywhere in players like OP. Think of your mindset as a multiplier. All the hard work you do, with a an unhelpful mindset, the outcome might be getting mutiplied by .5 or something like that. So you'd have to double the workload to get the amount of progress you want. If you have a helpful growth mindset, it might be getting multiplied by 1.5 or something like that. So you can literally learn more efficiently, with less work, because you are more present, focused, and utilizing higher order thinking. But by approaching each game with curiosity, you are also gaining a lot more self awareness, find it easier to take accountability on what your weaknesses are, and not involving any kind of ego in the process. It takes time to shift mindsets but it can really make a huge difference, especially long term.

If CattlesRevenge returns to Chess.com, should we talk to him or just leave him alone? I'm curious to know if he has seeked therapy or not. If he comes back though, all the advice here would 100% help

I aint tellling people advice if they said the f word and started raging over a few loses

That's actually accurate